Dwarves not Chopping Down Trees

[BE02-Raziel]

Hey. New DF player here, since yesterday. As I start gaining new citizens, I wanted to start making an effort building private bedrooms and so I needed a lot of wood, as you can imagine. I had a good amount of wood but then the task of flooring these bedrooms had immediately sucked my wood resources dry and well, I needed my Dwarves to start chopping down trees.

As the title of this thread states, no matter what I do, they're not chopping down trees.

- I have axes. I desperately made two training axes but I realized I can check my stores and found that I still have my copper axes.
- I've already marked trees for chopping down.
- I once had my entire population only set to wood cutting but all they did was stay in the meeting zone and ate and drank.
- I have no burrows at all that should affect their AI.
- Not sure if relevant but I have designated some members of the population in a squad so I have a specific defensive force.

Not only wood chopping but this also affects mining. I effectively have only two active miners.

Mind advising me what I seem to be doing wrong or is there something I missed?

[graalGGTV]

If your soldiers are using the axes as weapons, the woodcutters aren't able to get them. I'm not sure if that's the problem, but it's possible

[The Trashman]

Did you designate the trees to be chopped from the base?

Squad equipment can get funny with miners/wood cutters/hunters in squads, so it's recommended to not have those dwarves in squads.

[Franz]

I had some issues at a certai point, I solved it by very scientifically clicking all the buttons in the labour assignment tab for my wood choppers on and off at random. Lock them in the task, remove the task, reassign them to something else, do all of that and at the end give them back the chop trees task. Worked for me™

[BE02-Raziel]

I haven't designated weapons to the Dwarves in the squad since I'm quite early in (17 pop) and really lacking in resources. But these are good suggestions to look into. Thanks, guys.

[The Trashman]

Originally posted by BE02-Raziel:

I haven't designated weapons to the Dwarves in the squad since I'm quite early in (17 pop) and really lacking in resources. But these are good suggestions to look into. Thanks, guys.

If you gave them a uniform when you created the squad, the default uniforms include a weapon of their choice

[BE02-Raziel]

Don't know how it happened but now I got my designated woodcutters to start cutting wood. Could be just randomly clicking buttons in the labor assignment or disbanding the squad entirely.

[Pacorabanix]

Confirmed also: I had labor enabled for two dwarves, and 3 battle axes in my storage. Dwarves set to cut trees were not cutting trees and idling.

disbanding my only squad immediately solved the issue.

probably the militia dwarves had claimed the battle axes.

It should be possible to solve the issue by assigning a specific weapon (_not_ a battle axe) for the militia when you don't have many axes at the beginning. Aftwerward, keep a stock of axes that is larger than than the militia.

[AlP]

Originally posted by Marmalo:

It should be possible to solve the issue by assigning a specific weapon (_not_ a battle axe) for the militia when you don't have many axes at the beginning. Aftwerward, keep a stock of axes that is larger than than the militia.

It is possible.

And for future reference, items assigned to a squad position remain assigned to it when you remove a dwarf from the squad. So you need to remove them as well to make them available.